Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Representations of Monastic
Clothing in Late Antiquity
REBECCA KRAWIEC
This article examines descriptions of the clothing of male and female monks
that abound in late antique monastic literature. These accounts sought to
create a monastic “uniform” that would set the boundaries and establish
the values of monastic life. Despite this attempt at standardization, I argue,
contradictions appeared between worn, drab clothes and shining garments as
the proper monastic attire, between the authority of male dress and female
dress, between acceptable and unacceptable nakedness. These incongruities
express the central tension of monasticism between sinful human and transcen-
dent angelic identity. Ancient authors were aware of this paradox and so too
possible misperceptions of monastic clothing and its meaning.
INTRODUCTION
The first stages of the ideas in this article—and some portions of what appears
here—came from papers delivered at the AAR, Denver, CO in 2001 and at “Living
for Eternity: Monasticism in Egypt,” University of Minnesota, March 6–9, 2003. I
thank Philip Sellew for inviting me to give the latter paper. A Dean’s Summer Grant
awarded at Canisius College provided support during the revision process in summer
2006. John Dugan, David Brakke, and especially Andrew Jacobs read drafts and gave
crucial advice as I worked on this version. I also appreciate the suggestions from the
anonymous readers, which helped clarify my argument.
1. Nina Lubomierski has recently shown that this hagiography, attributed to Shen-
oute’s successor as head of the White Monastery, Besa, is quite later in composition.
Her work overturns scholarly acceptance of Besa’s authorship, which my argument
here does not rely on. See Nina Lubomierski, “Untersuchungen zur sog. Vita Sinuthii,”
(Ph.D diss., Heidelberg University, 2006).
Journal of Early Christian Studies 17:1, 125–150 © 2009 The Johns Hopkins University Press
126 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
2. Besa, Life of Shenoute 98–101, with quotation at 99 (J. Leipoldt, ed. with the
assistance of W. E. Crum, Sinuthii Archimandritae Vita et Opera Omnia, CSCO 41.
SCopte 1 [Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1906], 48–49). Translation from David Bell,
The Life of Shenoute by Besa, Cistercian Studies 73 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Pub-
lications, Inc., 1983), 71–72.
3. Besa, Life of Shenoute 76–79, with quotation at 78 (CSCO 41:38–39; trans.
Bell, Life of Shenoute, 64–65).
4. For the idea that “holy woman” was a contradiction in terms, see Patricia Cox
Miller, “Is there a Harlot in This Text? Hagiography and the Grotesque,” in Dale B.
Martin and Patricia Cox Miller, eds., The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gen-
der, Asceticism, and Historiography, 87–102 (Raleigh, NC: Duke University Press,
2005), esp. 90 and 97.
KRAWIEC/“GARMENTS OF SALVATION” 127
the properly attired monk—a person, male or female, who has changed
into an identifiable garment, usually drab or dark, that becomes tattered
and worn over time as evidence of the success of the monk’s ascetic prac-
tices.5 Taking on this particular clothing, in the words of the Sayings of the
Desert Fathers, “makes” a person a monk.6 Likewise, in monastic Rules
from communal settings, proper monastic clothing signals membership,
not just within a monastery as a whole but even within the individual
houses that comprised that larger structure.7 The monk’s clothing is the
most obvious outward visible marker of identity, although general deco-
rum, facial appearance, and even hair can all contribute to that overall
portrait.8 Clothing is thus an important aspect of “the rhetoric of appear-
ance and lifestyle” that “might be integrated into the social category of
the ‘making’ of the early Christian ascetic ideal.”9
5. Throughout this article, I will use to the term “monk” to refer to all persons,
male or female, who are described as having withdrawn from everyday life to pur-
sue holiness, usually through ascetic practices, such as fasting, extensive prayer, and
sexual renunciation. For a more thorough discussion of monasticism as a movement
in early Christianity, see William Harmless, S.J., “Monasticism,” in Susan Ashbrook
Harvey and David Hunter, eds., Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2008). I thank Andrew Jacobs for personal correspondence
on this point of terminology.
6. At several points in the alphabetical collection, monks either take on, or put
off, the “monastic habit” as a sign of taking or leaving this life. Abba Theodore,
for example, questions a monk about his monasticism by asking, “how long you
have worn the habit (tÚ sx∞ma)?”Apophthemata patrum Theodore of Pherme 2 (PG
65:188; Translation from Benedicta Ward, SLG, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers:
The Alphabetical Collection, Cistercian Studies 59 [Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Pub-
lications, 1975], 78). In another, some monks ask Abba John the Cenobite, “John,
who clothed you in the habit (tÚ sx∞ma)? Who made you a monk (µ t¤w ¶pois° se
monaxÒn)?” Apophth. Patr. John the Cenobite 1 (PG 65:220: trans. Ward, Sayings,
96). See also the sayings of Epiphanius (Apophth. Patr. Epiphanius, Bishop of Cyr-
pus 4; PG 65:164), Poemon (Apophth. Patr. Poemon 11 and 182; PG 65:324–25 and
367), and Serapion (Apophth. Patr. Serapion 4; PG 65:416–17).
7. Andrew Crislip has an excellent summation of the use of clothing for monastic
identity in communal settings, including this point. See Andrew T. Crislip, From Mon-
astery to Hospital: Christian Monasticism and the Transformation of Health Care in
Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 60–61. For the
purposes of this article, I am less interested in clothing regulations per se and more
in literary representations of proper monastic dress.
8. For an explanation of how descriptions of saints “assembled for the reader suf-
ficient facial details by which to decode and detect a virtuous soul” (145), see Georgia
Frank, The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 137–45 with clothing at 143. For
a treatment of female appearance, including but not limited to clothing, see Teresa
Shaw, “Askesis and the Appearance of Holiness,” JECS 6 (1998): 485–99.
9. Shaw, “Askesis,” 486.
128 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
10. See Shaw, “Askesis,” 487, citing Cooper, Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Woman-
hood in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 82–87.
11. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans.
Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 170–72, lays out
how both practice and perception are part of habitus.
12. The most obvious example is the well-known fame of the Life of Antony but
David Brakke has also pointed out that many “Egyptian” monastic texts (History
of the Monks of Egypt; Sayings of the Desert Fathers) were edited and produced in
Palestine and Asia Minor (Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual
Combat in Early Christianity [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006],
128–29). The sources for female monks are largely hagiographical and again tend to
be treated as a corpus (of “holy harlots” or respectable matrons). For a good over-
view of asceticism as a shared cultural phenomenon in late antiquity, but with local
variance, see Elizabeth A. Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in
Early Christianity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 14–44.
13. It remains possible that different clothing customs and fashions might alter an
audience’s perception of a text’s description of monastic dress and such particular-
ity could be the focus of a future study. See, for example, Ellen Swift’s focus on the
fourth-century Upper Danube provinces (Ellen Swift, “Dress Accessories, Culture
KRAWIEC/“GARMENTS OF SALVATION” 129
we shall see throughout, the problem of the female monk highlights, but
by no means exhausts, the various contradictions explored and addressed
in the monastic habit.
The link between clothing, the body, and religious identity is a topic that
has become vital for those who study both ancient and modern religion,
arising from the current interest in the “making” of people.14 Studies of
modern dress and religion have pointed to the importance of the emerg-
ing field of the “sociology of the body” to understand the use of dress
as a symbolic expression of identity within a social system.15 Overall,
dress is a “window through which we might look into a culture.”16 For
antiquity, rhetorical constructions in texts are the basis of analysis, rather
than the ethnographic fieldwork characteristic of sociology.17 Neverthe-
less, some of these same theories and insights are applicable, especially
the work of Pierre Bourdieu, whose “analysis of lifestyle, manners, and
tastes” and description of “habitus” shape understanding of the “rhetoric
and Identity in the Late Roman Period,” Antiquité Tardive 12 (2004): 217–22). My
concern here, however, is more on the various manipulations of a shared language
of clothing.
14. Shaw draws attention to this interest in scholarship in late ancient studies (Shaw,
“Askesis,” n. 1). An updated list would include at least David Brakke, Demons and
the Making of the Monk.
15. Linda B. Arthur, ed., Religion, Dress and the Body (Oxford: Berg, 1999),
1–3, gives an overview of the major theoreticians who influence current sociology of
the body (Mary Douglas, Erving Goffman, Michele Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, and
Bryan Turner).
16. Arthur, ed. Religion, Dress and the Body, 2.
17. There are, of course, material remains of actual textiles from late antiquity,
especially in Egypt. See, for example, volume 12 (2004) of Antiquité Tardive which
is largely devoted to the archaeological study of clothing; of particular pertinence to
my topic is Lise Bender Jorgensen, “A Matter of Material: Changes in Textiles from
Roman Sites in Egypt’s Eastern Desert,” Antiquité Tardive 12 (2004): 87–99. While
my focus remains on rhetorical constructions in monastic texts, it is worth pointing
out that both texts and material remains provide evidence of how people wished to
be perceived, and not of actuality. Swift argues, “material culture is never simply
reflective of a particular status but can be used to construct that status . . . when
material culture is studied as a signifier of group identity, the examination is merely
of how various groups perceived themselves, and how they wanted to be perceived
by others” (“Dress Accessories,” 218). I thank the anonymous reader for bringing
this volume to my attention.
130 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
that ascetic texts have shared directives that are so ubiquitous as to be overlooked;
yet these “naturalize” the virgin’s actions and so “firm up the institutional contours”
of the ascetic lifestyle.
24. As Maud Gleason has argued (Maud W. Gleason, Making Men: Sophists and
Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995],
155–56).
25. Bourdieu, Distinction, 206.
26. Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1992), 98. Scholars of late antiquity have recently used Bell’s theories about
the ritualized body to show how both monastic rules and clothing produce a ritu-
alized monastic body. For rules, see chapter 2, “The Ritualization of the Monastic
Body: Shenoute’s Rules” in Caroline T. Schroeder, Monastic Bodies: Discipline and
Salvation in Shenoute of Atripe (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2007). For the specific role of clothing as a “ritualized activity” that “helped shape
late antique Christians’ perception of their bodies and their world,” see Stephen J.
Davis, “Fashioning a Divine Body: Coptic Christology and Ritualized Dress,” HTR
98 (2005): 335–62, quotation at 336.
132 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
27. Lynda L. Coon, Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiq-
uity (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 31. Coon also has a
chapter on “The Rhetorical Uses of Clothing in the Lives of Sacred Males” (52–70)
but her interests in that chapter are primarily western (as opposed to her discussion
of female hagiography). Her general theme of a link between biblical clothing and
hagiography (Chapter 2) has helped shape my arguments.
28. This layout of clothing as indicator of points in salvation history is from Sebas-
tian Brock, “Clothing Metaphors as a Means of Theological Expression in Syriac
Tradition,” in Typus, Symbol, Allegorie bei den ostilchen Vatern und ihren Paral-
lelen im Mittelalter. Internationales Kolloquium, Eichstatt 1981, ed. M. Schmidt
and C. F. Geyer; Eichstatter Beitrage, band 4, Abteilung Philosophie und Theologie
(Regensburg: Pustet, 1982), 11–38.
29. Examples from Theodoret’s Religious History include James (1.2; Pierre Canivet
and Alice Leroy-Molinghen, eds., Histoire des Moines de Syrie: Histoire Philothée, SC
234 and 257 [Paris: Cerf, 1977 and 1979],162); Symeon the Elder (6.9; SC 234:356–58);
Zeon (12.2; SC 234:460–62); and Maesymas (14.2; SC 257:10–12). Theodoret also
uses a tunic to discuss a monk’s need for singleness in ascetic practice, and resistance
to additions or distractions (Aphrahat [8.4; SC 234:380–82]). In another description,
Baradatus does not have worn clothes but rather covers his whole body in skins (Bara-
datus [27.3; SC 257:220]). For more on biblical allusions in the Religious History, see
Derek Krueger, “Typological Figuration in Theodoret of Cyrrhus’s Religious History
and the Art of Postbiblical Narrative,” JECS 5 (1997): 393–419.
KRAWIEC/“GARMENTS OF SALVATION” 133
30. Apophth. Patr. Theodore of Pherme 28 (PG 65:193–5). The “habit” here is
a leb¤tvna.
31. Female monastic clothing, in its drabness, draws on other biblical images, as
Coon argues, Sacred Fictions, 29–44. In particular, she distinguishes between the author-
ity associated with male clothing and the “sin or women’s subordination” symbolic
in female clothing (31). For women, the “adoption of mourning dress is symbolic of
the inherent depravity of the female sex and the necessity of physical penance” (32).
While I agree with aspects of this distinction, I argue that both male and female cloth-
ing has a greater range of meaning than expressed by this dichotomy.
32. The trope of donning particular clothing when converting to asceticism appears
in several instances of Jerome’s description of female monks (Marcella, Paula the Elder
and the Younger, Eustochium, and Demetrias).
33. Vita Sanctae Mariae Meretricis, Cap. 6 uses this phrase but it is Abraham’s
perception of her dress (PL 73:651–60, at 655). Translation from Benedicta Ward,
S.L.G., Harlots of the Desert: A study of repentance in early monastic sources. Cis-
tercian Studies 106 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1987), 92–101, at 96.
Meantime he is willing to “make use of hostile dress” (inimici habitu) to rescue her;
Ward, Harlots, 95, has “alien dress.” After her rescue, Abraham describes the dress she
wore, and money she earned, as evil in Cap. 10 (PL 73:658; Ward, Harlots, 99).
34. In addition to what clothes were worn, hagiographic images of the production
of cloth, through spinning and weaving, also signifies women’s devotion to asceticism
(Coon, Sacred Fictions, 41–44).
134 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
accounts, which are far more elaborate than those for male monks, authors
seek a variety of ways to balance the tension created by a woman who has
religious authority through her ascetic practices.
35. This word, mhlvtÆ in Greek and melotis in Latin, is sometimes translated
“sheepskin,” sometimes “goatskin,” and sometimes just “mantle.” It needs to be
distinguished from flmãtion, which also gets translated “mantle” but which is not
animal skin, but cloth and is worn simply as an “outer garment” (LSJ 829b). On the
importance of Elijah in Egyptian literature of this time period, see David Frankfurter,
Elijah in Upper Egypt: The Apocalypse of Elijah and Early Egyptian Christianity
(Minneapolis, MN: Augsberg Fortress Press, 1993).
36. Cassian, Institutes 1.2. (Jean-Claude Guy, ed., Jean Cassien: institutions cenobi-
tiques, SC 109 [Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1965], 36). Translation from Boniface Ramsey,
John Cassian: The Institutes, ACW 58 (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), 21.
37. Cassian, Institutes 1.7 discusses the melotis and quotes the Hebrews passage
(SC 109:46–48). In addition, the commentary to the translation of Book I lays out
the ubiquity of these clothing allusions and meanings in monastic literature (Ramsey,
John Cassian, 29–33). Cassian’s description (in Latin) stems from living with Egyptian
monks under the care of Evagrius. Evagrius’s similar description (in Greek) of the alle-
gorical meanings of monastic dress, however, does not mention Elijah or the Hebrew
prophets. Instead he highlights the role of Christ. See the prologue of Evagrius, Pra-
tikos (Antoine Guillaumont, and Claire Guillamont, eds., Evagre le Pontique: Traite
Pratique, ou, le Moine, SC 171, vol. 2 [Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1971]). For a side by
KRAWIEC/“GARMENTS OF SALVATION” 135
it is this clothing, especially his belt (zona), that makes the “man of God”
recognizable as such to others.38
So too the History of the Monks in Egypt (HM) links the strictness of
the monastic life with clothing, specifically the sheepskin mantle (melo-
tas), again meant to evoke Elijah.39 Yet rather than a self-conscious cre-
ation of the monastic habit laden with symbolic meaning, as in Cassian,
the HM treats the clothing of monks as a natural, unquestioning part of
its description. Indeed, monastic clothing is so “unconscious” in this text
that even though there is portrait of the monk who is credited with hav-
ing invented the monastic habit, the clothing itself is not described.40 Both
texts thus control information in order to create a definition of the monk
through his clothing.41 Although the information is presented in opposite
ways—detailed versus offhand—the impression remains the same: a man
of God, separate from the rest of humanity, who is easily identified, and
thus categorized, by his clothing.
The meaning of Elijah’s mantle was especially useful in the crafting of
hagiographies that were meant in part to establish the authority both of
the subject (the monk) and the author. In the classic portrait of a soli-
tary monk, Athanasius’s Life of Antony, Elijah is once again declared the
role model for the monastic life.42 In the end, the dying Antony bestows
his monastic garments—two sheepskins (mhlvtØn), a “garment for lying
side comparison of the interpretation of clothing in these two texts, see William Harm-
less, S.J., Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), Table 12.3 on p. 381–83.
38. Cassian, Institutes 1.3 (SC 109:36–38; trans. Ramsey, John Cassian, 21).
39. Historia Monachorum 3: “These live a very strict life: they wear sheepskin
cloaks (mhlvtãw), eat with their faces veiled, and their heads bowed so that no one
should see his neighbor, and keep such a profound silence that you would think you
were in the desert” (Andre-Jean Festugiere, ed., Historia Monachorum in Aegypto:
Edition critique du texte grec et traduction annotee [Brussels: Société des Bollandistes,
1961], 39). Translation from The Lives of the Desert Fathers: The Historia Mona-
chorum in Aegypto, trans. Norman Russell, Cisterian Studies 34 (Kalamazoo, MI:
Cistercian Publications, 1980), 65.
40. tÚ monadikÚn ¶nduma HM 10.3 (Festugiere, Historia Monachorum, 76). Pater-
muthius is the monk in question.
41. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City, NJ:
Doubleday, 1959). He explains the role of control in creating “a kind of informa-
tion game—a potentially infinite cycle of concealment, discovery, false revelation,
and rediscovery” (8). Such an understanding of interaction and the impressions cre-
ated are further elucidated by Bourdieu’s notion of habitus as another aspect of this
interactive process.
42. V. Anton. 7 (G. J. M. Bartelink, ed., Athanase d’Alexandrie: Vie d’Antoine.
SC 400 [Paris: Cerf, 1994], 154).
136 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
43. V. Anton. 91.8–9 (SC 400:370; translation from Athanasius: The Life of Ant-
ony and the Letter to Marcellinus, trans. Robert C. Gregg [Mahway, NJ: Paulist Press,
1980], 97). It is noteworthy that each bishop receives a sheepskin (and surprising
that Antony has two), while they split the other garments: Athanasius gets the mantle
and Serapion the hairshirt.
44. David Brakke, Athanasius and Asceticism (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
Press, 1998), 246–47.
45. Recalling Bourdieu’s terminology. The transfer in this text is literally of an
economic, material good (the clothing) but symbolically of authority; this symbolic
meaning only functions within Christian culture where the allusions and their inter-
pretations are already understood.
46. Besa, Life of Shenoute 8, 10 (CSCO 41:11; trans. Bell, Life of Shenoute, 44).
47. Two versions of this story appear, Life of Shenoute 106–8 and 137 (CSCO
41:51–52 and 60–61; trans. Bell, Life of Shenoute, 73–74 and 80).
48. Palladius reports that women in the Pachomian federation did not wear the
mantle (sometimes referred to in scholarship as a “hairshirt”), though it is unclear
whether they were not required, or not allowed. Palladius, Lausiac History 32 (where
the men’s mhlvtØn afige¤an efirgasm°nhn is described) and 33.1 (where the women have
the same way of life §ktÚw t∞w mhlvt∞w) (Cuthbert Butler, ed., The Lausiac History
of Palladius: A critical discussion together with notes on early Egyptian monasticism
[Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsnuchhandlung, 1967], 89 and 96). Coon points to
this aspect of the Pachomian community (without drawing attention to the difference
KRAWIEC/“GARMENTS OF SALVATION” 137
Some of these women, in their dress and asceticism, are mistaken for men;
one well-known example is Pelagia the harlot, who trades her “beautiful
if scanty” dress for masculine clothing, here the bishop’s tunic, when she
goes to live in the desert.49 Such tales, however, are not “entirely successful
in promoting a truly female model of holiness,” even in acceptable male
dress and so “have multiple transgressions of gender identities.”50 In con-
trast, Melania the Younger’s Life is marked by increasingly proper monas-
tic attire, including coarse clothing made from hair and even the “belt”
Cassian values for its holy signification of the “man of God” (above), all
of which are used to affirm explicitly her own holiness.51
Melania, raised in wealth and finery, begins her ascetic path in secret.
Only her aunt, whom Melania begs to remain silent, knows that she wears a
“coarse tunic” (flmãtion xondrÚn) under the clothing required by her gender
and status as a leading Roman matron.52 When finally she convinces her
family and husband to allow her to embrace asceticism wholeheartedly,
she begins by renouncing fine clothing in order to train herself for harsher
ascetic practices; in this she is more successful than her husband, who at
first simply dresses in the Cicilian style before Melania’s prayers and encour-
agement push him to the “natural-colored” Antiochene garments which
“were worth one coin.”53 Here Melania’s actions regarding clothing are in
keeping with the hagiography’s general “gender reversal” that emphasizes
her predominance as the more ascetic partner in her marriage.54
Eventually Melania progresses to being able to wear a head-covering
(mofÒrion), garment (flmãtion), and hood (koukoÊllion) of haircloth
(tr¤xina), all the more noteworthy since she previously had such sensi-
tive skin just touching the thread of embroidery would cause a rash.55 In
addition, her willingness to be inappropriately dressed for “the world”
when meeting the empress underscores the renunciation made visible
in her clothing; they are declared to be “garments of salvation” (flmãtia
svthr¤ou).56 Although she did not wear the sheepskin mantle, Melania
wore a belt (z≈nh) from a “holy man” which she then used to perform
miracles.57 Melania thus had the ability to use her clothing as a male monk
might, but only because she took on male clothing and, by extension, its
divine authority.
Finally, after her death, Melania is buried in clothes “worthy of her holi-
ness,” all of which are typical monastic clothing: “the tunic (stixãrion)
of a certain saint, the veil (mofÒrion) of another servant of God, another
52. V. Mel. 4 (Denys Gorce, ed., Vie de Sainte Melanie: text grec, introduction,
traduction et notes, SC 90 [Paris: Cerf, 1962], 132–34). Translation from Elizabeth A.
Clark, Life of Melania the Younger (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1984), 29.
53. V. Mel. 8 (SC 90:140–42; trans. Clark, Life, 31–32).
54. Coon, Sacred Fictions, 114–15. She also argues that Melania’s renunciation of
luxurious clothing is “a kind of universal repentance for her sex” with her veil and
hood serving “as punishments for her past life of luxury” (115). I am less certain
that Gerontius regards Melania as “punished” (more as victorious), but agree that
the gender aspect of luxury also shapes Gerontius’s presentation.
55. V. Mel. 31 (SC 90:186–88; trans. Clark, Life of Melania, 48). Several of the
terms Gerontius uses in Greek descriptions of Melania’s clothes parallel the Latin
of Cassian, Institutes 1, most significantly including the mofÒrion (compare “veil,
head-dress of women and priests”; LSJ 1085a); the leb¤tvna, which is described in
Jerome’s translation of the monastic Rule of Pachomius as an Egyptian garment with-
out sleeves; and, as noted, the z≈nh (see SC 90:186–87, n. 2–5).
56. V. Mel. 11 (SC 90:146; trans. Clark, Life of Melania, 34).
57. V. Mel. 61 (SC 90:248–50; trans. Clark, Life of Melania, 73).
KRAWIEC/“GARMENTS OF SALVATION” 139
garment without sleeves (lebÆtonow), the belt (z≈nh) of another which she
had worn while she was alive, and the hood (koukoÊllion) of another”;
a “hood made from the hair (koukoÊllion tr¤xinon) of another saint”
replaced a pillow and she had just a linen wrapping as a burial cloth. In
male hagiographies, these garments and their symbolic meanings support
the authority of the monk; for Melania, they are necessary to emphasize
her “holiness” in contrast to her gender. Indeed, Gerontius takes pains to
explain his detailed description: “I think it necessary for me to describe
them for the benefit of those who may read this account.” The “benefit”
here is the perception Gerontius is shaping, that Melania has taken on
(male) virtue: “for it was fitting that she be buried in the garments (tå
flmãtia) of those whose virtues she had acquired while she was living.”58
Melania is thus the most successful of these various (unnamed) saints,
bringing together all their virtues in her assortment of burial garments. She
is buried richly dressed, in the new terms of monasticism, having literally
accumulated the “symbolic capital” of others, just as she once controlled
much of the “economic capital” of the Roman world.
skin as garments but in the context of Symeon’s holy body being a source
of blessing to other people; that is, in its extraordinariness, rather than its
ordinariness.61 This divergent usage of one metaphor reflects the struggle
ancient authors had in expressing the dual status of the monk.
The monastic garment itself could preview the end time in its association
with the wedding garment that is appropriate for the heavenly banquet.
Abba Dioscorus said, “If we wear our heavenly robe (tÚ oÈrãnion ¶nduma),
we shall not be found naked. But if we are found not wearing this garment,
what shall we do, brothers? We, even we also, shall hear the voice that says,
‘Cast them into outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.’
And brothers, there will be great shame in store for us, if, after having worn
this habit (sx∞ma) for so long, we are found in the hour of need not having
put on the wedding garment (tÚ ¶nduma toË gãmou).”62
Monastic clothing in this saying represents all the actions that make up the
monastic life. So too it signifies the salvation made possible by that life,
and as such it is a “heavenly robe.”63 Yet Abba Dioscorus simultaneously
reminds his audience that even for the monk salvation is not assured. The
“robe” can be lost so that, rather than dressed for salvation, one is found
naked, or condemned. In contrast, the female monk, and former harlot,
Mary, wore away her garments to the point of (acceptable) nakedness as
the means to her salvation.
This liminality between ordinary and exalted, between sinful and saved,
again becomes more complicated in the case of female monks since their
gender, and the sexuality inherent within it, emphasized their status as
sinful. Since this was particularly true of the “harlot” turned saint, these
female hagiographies have an acute tension that has recently been open
to multiple interpretations.64 The sexually promiscuous Mary has been
linked to biblical figures such as Eve and Mary Magadalene (whose
61. Theodoret, Religious History 26.12 (SC 257:184). For a discussion of the
relationships among the three versions of Symeon’s hagiography, see Susan Ashbrook
Harvey, “The Sense of a Stylite: Perspectives on Simeon the Elder,” VC 42 (1988):
376–94.
62. Apoph. Patr. Dioscorus 3 (PG 65:161; trans. Ward, Sayings, 55).
63. The trope of “shining robes” is not limited to monastic hagiography but also
appears in baptismal literature, as a representation of the shameless nakedness that
existed before the Fall and to which saved people will return. See Jonathan Z. Smith,
Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religion (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1978), 12.
64. Miller describes this text as having “interpretive oddities” which show the
struggle the author had with affirming a female as holy (“Is There a Harlot,” 93).
KRAWIEC/“GARMENTS OF SALVATION” 141
anderings, he gives her his own tattered cloak with which she was able to
w
partially cover herself so that he might to listen to her account of her life.72
At this point, both subject and narrator of the hagiography use nakedness
to indicate the state of Mary’s self: when pressed for her lifestory, Mary
declares that since Zossima has seen her naked body, he can hear of her
sinful deeds.73 In contrast, once he witnesses the powers arising from her
asceticism, Zossima declares that Mary was “clothed in nakedness,” that
is, her nakedness no longer reveals her sinful female body but has come
to signify the extent and success of her ascetic endeavors.74 Whereas for
other female monks like Melania and Macrina (below), clothing itself
signifies their ascetic deeds, here Mary has had to wear away her clothing
to achieve this status. Because of her promiscuity, the symbolic capital of
“worn clothing” is insufficient because of the nature of her sinful deeds:
she had refused economic capital but engaged in sex for pure pleasure.75
Only nakedness, reversed from its usual shameful status, as indicator of
fallen humanity, to symbolic clothing, can counter the weight of her deeds;
or, in Bourdieu’s terms, since the deeds were “cheap” and “vulgar,” only
the rarest of commodities, a body clothed by nakedness, serves to cor-
72. Vita Mariae Egyptiae, Cap. 9 (PL 73:678). The Greek parallel is Cap. 2.12
(PG 87:3708). Ward, Harlots, 42 has “old and tattered cloak,” which is in the Greek
text (palaiÚn ka‹ §rrvgÚw flmãtion), but not the Latin. See Miller’s point that Mary’s
partial nakedness contributes to her seeming, but not complete, femininity (Miller,
“Is There a Harlot,” 93).
73. Vita Mariae Egyptiae, Cap. 12 (PL 73:679–80); Greek parallel is 2.17 (PG
87:3709). Also, in Vita Mariae Egyptiae, Cap. 9 (PL 73:677), she wants to protect
him from the “shame of my body (corporis turpitudinem).” See the Greek version
also (Vita Mariae Egyptiae, Cap. 2.12 [PG 87:3705]), where the Greek word for
“shame” echoes the shame evoked by Abba Dioscorus if monks would be found
lacking the wedding garment. This language, rather than Zossima’s acceptance and
even approval of her naked body, is more in keeping with ascetic portrayals. See, for
instance, Amun’s feelings about nakedness in Life of Antony. Here Athanasius tells
a story about Amun and Theodore crossing a river; he describes Amun’s feelings of
“disgrace and anxiety” about seeing his own naked body, even after he has taken
precautions that he and Theodore should not witness each other’s nakedness (VA
60.5–9) (SC 400:294–96; trans. Gregg, Athanasius, 76).
74. induta es nuditatem, Vita Mariae Egyptiae, Cap. 11 (PL 73:679; trans.
Ward, Harlots, 43–44). The Greek parallel is Cap. 2.16 (PG 87:3709), ≤mf¤eso tØn
gÊmnvsin.
75. Mary specifically notes that she refused payment for sex, even though she
needed to earn money through begging and spinning flax. The only material gain she
has from her licentiousness is gaining passage on a ship bound for the Holy Land.
See Miller, “Is There a Harlot,” 97, and Burrus, Sex Lives, 250–51.
KRAWIEC/“GARMENTS OF SALVATION” 143
rect them.76 In the end, Zossima departs, at Mary’s instruction, and later
returns to find her dead. Her burial clothes, like Melania’s, solidify the role
of clothing throughout: although buried in Zossima’s “torn cloak” her
body is described as still “naked as it had been before.”77 Like Melania,
Mary is buried in the clothes of (male) others, signifying male approval.
Yet the author simultaneously reminds the audience of her nakedness, a
result of her own ascetic deeds.
These tensions between naked and clothed, shamed and saved find
resolution, however, in two exceptional descriptions of monastic dress.
The Egyptian leader of the White Monastery, Shenoute, specifically warns
against a “worn garment” as being unsuitable for the “festival,” by which
he means the wedding banquet of Matt 22.11–13. He himself is a self-styled
prophet, dressed in appropriate garb that he can also tear in despair;78
and so too the monks under his care, here both men and women, are to
be dressed in the bright, shining garments of saints.79 Shenoute engages
in extensive biblical exegesis of passages related to clothing, making ref-
erence to clothing worn by Joseph, Jacob, Rebecca, and Jesus himself, as
well as to the various rules in Leviticus for priestly garments, in order to
show that proper monastic garments are, like Jesus’ in the tomb, “white
like snow” and, like the priests, “pure linen.”80 For Shenoute, the meta-
phorical meaning of clothing is straightforward: the monks’ ascetic deeds
were to lead to salvation, and so the monks should be dressed for salva-
tion. Anything other than clean, “resplendent” clothes was improper for
meeting God.
Similarly, one particular Saying also differs from the norm of tattered
rags as a necessary part of “successful” monastic appearance. Abba Joseph
rebukes a monk who comes to synaxis wearing a “small, old head-covering
with many stitches (polÊrrafon ka‹ mikrÚn mafÒrion palaiÒn)” and gives
him a “tunic (leb¤tvna) and whatever else he needed” so that the monk
can now look like an angel, as do the rest of the monks.81 This exception
prioritizes the link between proper monastic clothing and the monk’s sta-
tus as like an angel. Here the “mere rags” are discarded and the standard
monastic dress, the leb¤tvna, becomes the dress of angels. These moments
of inconsistency that erupt disturb a seemingly static portrayal of a prop-
erly dressed monk and so again reveal the anxiety about this new social
ranking as it was being set and shaped by ancient writers. The proper
“manner” of the monk was not yet so determined that the correct choice
of clothing was clear for all occasions.
81. Apoph. Patr. Cronius 5 (PG 65:249). I have modified the translation in Ward,
Sayings, 116. Note that the Greek for “with many stitches” is the same phrase that
describes the garment that indicates a “beautiful soul” in HM, n. 84 below.
82. For falseness see Shaw, “Askesis,” 496; and see Jerome, ep. 22 (CSEL 54:143–
214) on the question specifically of clothing obscuring false identity.
83. Antonius, Life of Symeon 5, narrates his action and 8 describes his companions’
discovery (Leitzman, Leben, 24–30; trans. Doran, Lives, 88–89, 90).
KRAWIEC/“GARMENTS OF SALVATION” 145
from the HM, a priest comments to a monk dressed “in a ragged garment
with many stitches (=ãkow §ndedum°non polÊrrafon),” “You have a most
beautiful mantle (kãlliston flmãtion) for a soul, brother.”84 Such a com-
ment, where shabby dress leads to spiritual status, also echoes Bourdieu’s
observation that symbolic capital can only be accumulated at the expense
of economic.85
The inner self that clothing reveals is not always beautiful, however.
False monks could be exposed by their desire for extra clothing.86 So too,
in a series of instructions to both male and female monks, the monastic
leader Shenoute used the condition of his own garments to claim access to
knowledge of hidden deeds. His clothing is at first polluted by his diseased
skin, then rendered useless by moth damage, then replaced by a second
tunic he does not like, and finally replaced by a third acceptable garment.
All these situations allow Shenoute to use the damaged state of his own
garment to uncover the state of the community and so to bare sinful bod-
ies within it. In the first letter of instruction, he begins:
So listen, you who have love for him who is disheartened [Shenoute];
observe his grief as he utters this, “See then, Lord, I am distressed, I am
in torment within and my heart is in turmoil for I have indeed rebelled.”
For this illness has left me without strength, thanks to the severity of the
pain. As a result, I am averse to my garment (HoIte) or [my g]arments
([naH]oeite) touching [my b]ody.87
Here, as Dwight Young has noted, Shenoute’s concern is not merely for his
own health or even the cleanliness of his body and its coverings, but also
for the purity, attained by correct monastic practice, of those who lived
in the community.88 The pollution that the monks’ sins have created for
that community is evident to Shenoute in the state of his own body and
his aversion to his monastic clothing, the locator of his identity.
In a later letter addressing the same situation, Shenoute uses the image
of moth damage spreading throughout a garment to make a dual claim:
that he has divine access to concealed deeds, even as the monastic clothing
reveals them. He writes, “Who but God is the witness of what he said to
another, [namely], ‘Have you seen [how] a moth gets into chests where
garments are kept and destroys not only the fringes but also the middle
thereof?’”89 Again Young has pointed out Shenoute’s use of his “mutilated
robe to deplore the defiling deeds with which some in the community have
‘clothed themselves.’”90 For both male and female monks in the White
Monastery, clothing does not just signify monastic identity but also the
spiritual status of that self, either pure or polluted. The monks’ wrongful
behavior will also be exposed in their garments: “Your knees shall not
cover you nor shall you clothe yourselves with your deeds. Or, if you have
already clothed yourselves with them, on you it is as garments stained with
blood.”91 Shenoute here reverses the role of clothing in texts that present
positive portrayals of “successful” monks; rather than revealing perfection,
clothing in the White Monastery reveals the sins that cannot be hidden.
The burial clothing of another famous, and once wealthy, monk,
Macrina, also participates in revelation and concealment by invoking the
tension between shabby and shining garments found in Shenoute’s biblical
exegsis and the Sayings of male monks, but here set in female terms.92 Dress
is, in her Life, a signifier of monastic perfection, but it is unclear whether
this perfection should be symbolically presented by having Macrina appear
as a splendid bride, or a properly drab monk.93 Moreover, her brother
Gregory is the one who manages the perception of Macrina through her
clothing both as author of her hagiography and as the person who, along
with two women who lived in Macrina’s ascetic household, prepares her
body for her funeral.94 Now that she is dead, Gregory determines that it
is “above reproach to put brighter ornament on the body and to adorn
with brilliant fine linen that pure and spotless flesh.”95 In allowing such
ornamentation only in death, Gregory makes clear its unacceptability in
the life Macrina had led. Then it might have appeared arrogant to dress
as a “bride of Christ,” to claim an angelic status for oneself. Moreover,
his helper Vetiana is only willing to allow its acceptability now if Macrina
had given consent (prior to her death), to which another monk, Lampa-
dium, bears witness. A problem arises, however, in that Macrina did not
have “brighter ornament” or “brilliant fine linen” available, nor did the
monastery as a whole (a point Gregory, the non-monastic visitor, seems
to have missed when he asks whether any appropriate clothing can be
found in the storage closets). Lampadium, in explaining the situation to
Gregory, uses language that reflects the usual role of clothing for monas-
tic women: she specifically points to Macrina’s “dress . . . the veil of her
head, her worn-out sandals” as evidence that Macrina was a successful
monk.96 Like other monks, Macrina’s ascetic deeds created her proper
clothing: “the pure life was what she looked to as ornament for her, this
was the decoration of her life and the shroud of death.”97
Yet even within this situation, clothing hides as well as reveals. The
anxiety is not about possibilities of “falseness” but instead that the success
being touted by her dress could be misunderstood. Macrina’s clothing for
her funeral becomes controversial when the “deaconness” (Lampadium)
determines that “it was not suitable that she should be seen by the eyes
of the virgins prepared as a bride.”98 The inappropriateness lies not with
Macrina, since her monastic discipline allowed her to be dressed in this
fashion. Rather the danger lay in the possible misunderstanding on the
part of her followers, and by extension some readers. They might think
her current funeral attire was somehow necessary: “that this holy beauty
should not be made brilliant by the imported ornament of dress.”99 The
94. Elm also examines the role of clothing in Macrina’s monasticism, though from
a more historical perspective than from a rhetorical one (Elm, Virgins, 98–99).
95. Vita Macrinae 28.10–13 (Pierre Maraval, ed., Grégoire de Nysse: Vie de
Sainte Macrine, SC 178 [Paris: Cerf, 1971], 234). All translations for this section are
modified from Virginia Woods Callahan, Gregory of Nyssa: Ascetical Works, FC 58
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1967), here 183.
96. Vita Macrinae 29.15–16 (SC 178:236; trans. Callahan, Ascetical Works,
184).
97. Vita Macrinae 29.6–8 (SC 178:236; trans. Callahan, Ascetical Works, 184).
98. Vita Macrinae 32.2–4 (SC 178:246; trans. Callahan, Ascetical Works, 186).
99. Vita Macrinae 32.4–7 (SC 178:246; trans. Callahan, Ascetical Works, 186).
148 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
100. ep. 262.4 (CSEL 57:624). My translations are all modified from J. H. Baxer,
St. Augustine: Select Letters, LCL 10 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1930), 505–7.
KRAWIEC/“GARMENTS OF SALVATION” 149
tine then makes clear that there is no religious basis for her actions: “If
[in these other matters] . . . you and your faithful husband ought to have
shared advice . . . and you ought not to reject his wishes, how much more
ought you to change nothing, or to usurp anything, concerning your
clothes (habitu) and your dress (vestitu)—a thing about which we have
read no divine orders.”101 Augustine concedes that 1 Tim 2.9 does discuss
women’s apparel, but those “divine orders” pertain only to adornment for
“empty show.” The standard matron’s cloak (habitus matronalis) is not,
for Augustine, included: it may “befit faithful [i.e., Christian] wives with
their religious observance intact.”102 Ecdicia, however, is wearing the gar-
ments associated with widows, much to her (living) husband’s dismay.
Augustine concludes that the quarrel that resulted over clothing was
one that did more harm than any good Ecdicia gained from a change in
clothing: “For what is more absurd than that a wife lords it over her hus-
band about a lowly garment, when it could have been more useful for you
to obey him with shining deeds than to fight against with him with your
dark clothes?”103 Augustine uses both “shining” and “drab” but criticizes
the “drab” clothes for not being symbolic of shining deeds. Moreover, he
also calls on the notion of an “inner self,” but here one not indicated by
outer garments: “even if you were compelled . . . you would be able to
have a humble heart beneath your proud finery.”104 Ecdicia’s need to hide
her ascetic self, like Melania’s, stems from her dual status as monk and
wife, but she is denied duality of dress. Her soul is best served not by a
metaphorical beautiful mantle, but an actual one, by worldly standards.
CONCLUSION
Over and over again, monks, male and female, appear in texts dressed
appropriately, as defined by the author. What seems at first glance a stable
marker, an off-hand reference to the proper attire associated with renuncia-
tion, shifts as these writers stress different aspects of the identity: alienation
from the world, angelic status, widowhood, bride of Christ, and, above
101. ep. 262.9 (CSEL 57:628; trans. Baxter, Augustine, 513–15). By “faithful,”
Augustine means “Christian,” not sexual fidelity, since, of course, Ecdicia’s husband
has committed adultery.
102. ep. 262.9 (CSEL 57:628; trans. Baxter, Augustine, 515).
103. ep. 262.9 (CSEL 57:629; trans. Baxter, Augustine, 515).
104. ep. 262.10 (CSEL 57:629; trans. Baxter, Augustine, 517), though keeping in
mind that Ecdicia’s husband is not insisting on unbecoming dress, just the matron’s
dress, which Augustine has already declared acceptable.
150 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
all, an inner person who may, or may not, be discernible by outer appear-
ance. Perhaps no moment is more surprising then when Zossima, seeing
the naked Mary in the desert, runs after her, rather than away, despite her
unclothed state. That image—a male monk in a tattered garment chasing
through the desert a naked woman whose body has been blackened by the
sun—pulls together the various meanings and associations with monas-
tic clothing. What seems like most improper behavior reveals itself as the
means of both Mary’s and Zossima’s salvation, rendering it proper. Like-
wise, the various forms of dress can all be made appropriate through the
author’s control of its perception, and so of its meaning. Shabby and worn
or gleaming bright, even naked, these monks are dressed for salvation.